Thursday, November 20, 2008

This Thrifty Green Thursday tip of the week isn't that thrifty, but it's definitely green. Treehugger highlighted this company, and with the holiday shopping season upon us, I thought it would be worth mentioning. Austrian-based Re-Shirt sells used t-shirts, but not in the anonymous, consignment store kind of way. The person donating the shirt must provide the story behind it, such as where he or she bought it, what he or she was doing when they wore it, etc. Re-Shirt then gives them a new life with a registered Re-Shirt label. If you become a Re-Shirt user, you can keep writing about you and your shirt on the company's web site.If people's stories don't persuade you to buy a Re-Shirt, maybe some of these facts the company provides about t-shirt production will:

Cotton production and processing is organized globally: Each year more than 20 million tons of cotton are produced.

Extremely large amounts of water are used in the cotton production process. On average, 20,000 liters of water are needed to produce 1 kilogram of raw cotton.

The extreme amounts of water needed for growing cotton have resulted among other things in the drying up of the Aral Sea, one of the biggest environmental catastrophes of our time.

So my Thrifty Green Thursday tip is find a shirt that speaks to you on Re-Shirt, and save some of the planet's valuable resources in the process. Click here for more tips.

9 comments:

I'm not sure i can save the Aral Sea, but I WILL check out the site. I do have a nice collection of tee shirts - most of them with funny stuff on them - but my 'most popular' one is my 'Buddha' shirt. It's a dark blue tee with an outline drawing, in gold, of "The Laughing Buddha" and the inscription 'Buddhalicious' beneath.

What a cool idea! I looked a the site and was curious where the profit is going. Do you know? People donate the shirts right? It would be cool if the money was also supporting green initiatives. Thanks so much for sharing this cool idea and for joining us this week for Thrifty Green Thursday!

I like the way they make donating used clothing more personal by having people tell the stories behind their t-shirts. I am not sure the stories behind many of my husband's old t-shirts are too interesting, though.